


the play's the thing

by betony



Category: Fire and Hemlock - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Fairies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 14:00:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2853365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betony/pseuds/betony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A snapshot from Tom and Laurel's life together (Or: two times the Lynns attended the theatre.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the play's the thing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pluviann](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pluviann/gifts).



“Darling,” Laurel coos one morning when she wakes up, “do let’s go to the theatre tonight.” 

Tom has learned to hate a great many things about Laurel, but he thinks that way she has of looking at him through her eyelashes—as though she would take more than his body, more than his soul—might be the very worst. At twenty-one, though, he knows already that she’s not to be crossed when she takes that note in her voice. He nods. 

The play is _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_. Laurel may be many things, but she doesn’t lack a sense of humor. 

The theatre is packed. In the box opposite, Tom can make out Morton Leroy, carrying on outrageously with a barely-grown blonde and very conspicuously ignoring Laurel, who is just as pointedly ignoring him back. They might as well have been the only two people there. It’s been enough time that the scandal from Laurel Leroy dropping her husband for a boy nearly half her age has almost faded, but from the way Leroy and Laurel carry on, they have no intention of keeping it that way. Tom supposes it’s all they have left, this petty bickering, since immortality has burned away all their other concerns. 

But it’s unbearable, being utterly disregarded by Laurel. Tom wants to say something, anything, to make Laurel notice him again, to make himself worthy of her….and the music starts, the blessed, blessed music and with the first strains of the cello, Tom comes back to himself again. He settles back into his seat and revels in every moment that the play distracts her from him. 

On the way home, Laurel murmurs, “I knew Titania, once.” 

“Did you?” says Tom flatly. 

She sighs, a little wistfully. “Oh, yes. She hated that play, you know. Took out her anger by stealing away poor William’s son—and a handsome one, he was. But no matter what she did, there was no denying the truth of it.” 

That had the signs of something important. “The truth?” he echoes, trying his best to keep his voice disinterested. 

Laurel must be tired, because for once she obliges. “That she fell in love, with—well, if he didn’t have the head of an ass, he ought to. And it was that love that made her weak, weak enough to fall to my hand when I challenged her and won.” 

Tom freezes. But it is too late to probe further because Laurel’s momentary lapse was just that; at the moment she is giggling and nuzzling Tom’s neck for the benefit of the driver. Tom grits his teeth and kisses back, ignoring the driver’s knowing grin in the rearview mirror as easily as the knot of revulsion in his stomach. 

Still. _Challenged_. An escape. Tom closes his eyes and vows not to forget a word of what she had said. 

(Tom has a sense of humor, too. Not three years later, he’ll send her an invitation to the theatre again. He won’t show up, but Laurel will—and in his place, the divorce papers. On a train speeding a hundred kilometres away, Tom will look at the playbill for _Peter Pan_ and wonder if Laurel claps her hands and chants: “I do, I do.”)


End file.
